Mechanisms of Gene Regulation: How Science Works

Carsten Carlberg graduated 1989 with a PhD in biochemistry at the Free University Berlin (Germany). After positions as postdoc at Roche (Basel, Switzerland), group leader at the University of Geneva (Switzerland) and docent at the University of Düsseldorf (Germany) he is since 2000 full professor of biochemistry at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio (Finland). His work focuses on mechanisms of gene regulation by nuclear hormones, in particular on vitamin D. At present Prof. Carlberg focuses projects on epigenome-wide effects of vitamin D on the human immune system. Ferdinand Molnár received his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Kuopio (Kuopio, Finland) in 2006. He did his postdoctoral training in Structural Biology at the IGBMC (Illkirch, France). In 2008 he joined the School of Pharmacy at the University of Eastern Finland (Kuopio, Finland) studying nuclear receptor-ligand, - protein and -DNA interactions. In 2018 he moved to the Nazarbayev University (Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan) where he holds an Associate Professor position at the Department of Biology. Prof. Molnár interests are integrative structural biology and bioinformatics, eukaryotic transcriptional regulation in health and disease and recombinant protein production.

Central dogma of molecular biology.- Impact of chromatin structure.- Epigenetics enables gene expression.- Gene regulation in the context of nuclear architecture.- Core promoter.- TATA box and other core promoter elements.- Genome-wide core promoter identification.- TFIID and Mediator as paradigms of multi-protein complexes.- Site-specific transcription factors and their domains.- Classification of transcription factors.- Activation of transcription factors.- Programing cellular differentiation by transcription factors.- Inflammatory signaling via NF-KB.- Sensing cellular stress via p53.- The nuclear receptor superfamily.- Molecular interactions of nuclear receptors.- Physiological role of nuclear receptors.- Next-generation sequencing.- Gene regulation in the context of Big Biology.- Exploring genome-wide transcription factor binding.- Integrating epigenome-wide datasets.- Cytosines and their methylation.- Histone modifications.- Gene regulation via chromatin modifiers.- Sensing energy metabolism via chromatin modifiers.- Epigenetics and chromatin.- Genome-wide understanding of epigenetics.- CTCF and genetic imprinting.- Epigenetics in health and disease.- Nucleosome positioning at promoters.- Chromatin remodeling.- Transcriptional dynamics in the presence of chromatin.- Organization of the nucleus.- Non-coding RNAs.- miRNAs and their regulatory potential.- Long ncRNAs.- Enhancer RNAs.